The Research Council of Norway, known in Norwegian as Forskningsrådet, is Norway’s national government agency for funding research and innovation. It was established in 1993 through the merger of five earlier sector research councils, and it now serves as the primary channel through which the Norwegian government distributes competitive research funding across disciplines. For a research administrator outside Norway advising on international collaboration, or an institution hosting a Norway-based partner, understanding how Forskningsrådet is organized and which of its instruments are open to non-Norwegian researchers is the starting point for any proposal involving Norwegian participation.
This guide is written for research administrators, international-office staff, and principal investigators evaluating Norwegian funding opportunities, particularly instruments aimed at bringing researchers from outside Norway into Norwegian institutions or supporting Norwegian researchers’ international mobility. Programme rules, budget ceilings, and application windows change between calls, so always confirm current terms directly on forskningsradet.no/en before advising an applicant, rather than relying on any secondary summary, including this one.
What the Research Council of Norway does
Forskningsrådet reports principally to Norway’s Ministry of Education and Research, though its funding mandate draws on appropriations from multiple ministries — together with the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries it manages roughly half of the funds it administers, reflecting its role spanning basic research, applied research, and innovation. The Council funds research and innovation projects, research infrastructure, and researcher training across all academic disciplines, and it also carries an advisory function, providing research-policy input to the Norwegian government.
Operationally, the Council organizes its funding activity through portfolio boards — thematic and disciplinary groupings, each overseeing programmes and calls within a defined subject area, comparable in function to the directorate or division structure used by national funders elsewhere. Headquartered in Oslo, the Council also maintains a role coordinating Norwegian participation in EU framework programmes, including Horizon Europe, which is one reason its funding instruments are frequently structured to complement rather than duplicate EU-level mechanisms such as the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).
Core funding instruments
Two instrument types recur across most Forskningsrådet calls and are worth understanding before looking at any specific programme:
- FRIPRO (Independent Projects) — the Council’s open, bottom-up funding scheme for basic research across all disciplines, comparable in function to an unrestricted investigator-initiated grant mechanism. FRIPRO calls are typically issued annually and are not tied to a predetermined thematic priority, in contrast to the Council’s mission-oriented or sector-specific programmes.
- Centres schemes — longer-term, larger-scale funding for research centres, including Centres of Excellence and Centres for Research-based Innovation, intended to build sustained capacity around a research group or theme rather than fund a single time-limited project.
Both instrument types can carry an international-mobility or international-recruitment component, which is where the schemes most relevant to non-Norwegian researchers and their institutions are typically attached, rather than existing as entirely separate funding lines.
International researcher recruitment: bringing researchers to Norway
Forskningsrådet runs a dedicated scheme aimed specifically at helping Norwegian research organisations recruit talented researchers from outside Norway. As administered under recent calls, the scheme works as follows — always verify current terms against the live call text, since eligibility windows and budget ceilings are reissued periodically:
- Who applies: Norwegian research organisations apply on behalf of a candidate researcher, through management-level representatives (rector, pro-rector, director, or delegated authority) of institutions that already hold a Research Council-funded centre or project, typically under FRIPRO or a Top Researchers call.
- Who the researcher must be: the recruited researcher must hold a PhD and, at the time of application, must not reside in Norway or hold employment at a Norwegian research institution. Under recent calls, eligible candidates must originate from outside the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, with Russia specifically excluded as well — a narrower geographic scope than simply ‘non-Norwegian’, so this detail should be checked against the live call rather than assumed.
- Scale: recent calls have set a per-project ceiling in the range of NOK 9 million, with project durations of roughly 24-36 months and an annual eligible-cost cap in the low millions of NOK, funded from an overall call envelope in the hundreds of millions of NOK. These figures are illustrative of the scheme’s recent scale, not a standing commitment — confirm current-cycle figures before citing them in a proposal budget.
The stated policy rationale for the scheme is to let Norwegian institutions strengthen research communities by recruiting internationally, rather than to fund a researcher’s mobility as an end in itself — a distinction worth flagging to a candidate researcher, since the application is institution-led, not something an individual researcher submits directly.
Outbound and inbound mobility: the FRIPRO international-mobility track
Separately from targeted recruitment, Forskningsrådet also funds international mobility as a component within its standard project mechanisms. The Researcher Project with International Mobility, issued under FRIPRO, funds project structures built specifically around a mobility stay — supporting Norway-based researchers spending a period abroad, or supporting a Norwegian host institution hosting an international researcher for a defined project period — rather than funding travel as an add-on to an otherwise domestic project. As with the recruitment scheme above, treat programme name, duration, and funding ceiling as call-specific and confirm against the current FRIPRO call text.
INTPART: building long-term institutional partnerships
INTPART (International Partnerships for Excellent Education, Research and Innovation) is a distinct instrument aimed at long-term institutional partnership-building rather than individual researcher mobility or recruitment. It funds Norwegian research organisations to develop sustained collaboration with partner countries and regions, historically including Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, China, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States, alongside a track supporting partnerships with African countries. Where the recruitment scheme above moves an individual researcher to Norway and the FRIPRO mobility track funds a mobility-structured project, INTPART instead funds the institutional relationship itself — joint courses, staff and student exchange, and collaborative research infrastructure — over a multi-year horizon.
How this fits alongside EU-level mobility funding
Researchers and institutions evaluating Norwegian opportunities are frequently comparing them against EU-level instruments, particularly the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, since Norway participates in Horizon Europe as an associated country. Forskningsrådet’s national schemes and MSCA are not the same programme and are not interchangeable in a single application, but they are frequently used together in sequence by the same institution — for example, a Norwegian institution hosting an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow may separately pursue Forskningsrådet’s own recruitment scheme for a different position, or use INTPART to build the underlying institutional relationship an MSCA application later draws on. A research office coordinating both should treat them as complementary funding lines with distinct eligibility rules and application processes, not as alternative routes to the same outcome.
Practical guidance for research administrators
- Confirm host-institution eligibility first. Most Forskningsrådet international schemes are applied for by the Norwegian institution, not directly by the international researcher, so the practical first step for a prospective candidate is identifying a Norwegian host with an existing eligible award or centre.
- Check the geographic eligibility scope carefully. Several inbound schemes exclude researchers already based in Europe (per the Council of Europe’s member-state definition) rather than simply requiring non-Norwegian origin — a distinction that changes whether a given candidate qualifies.
- Treat published figures as call-specific. Budget ceilings, durations, and application windows are reissued with each call cycle; do not carry forward a figure from a previous year’s call into a current proposal without checking the live call text.
- Use the official call archive as the source of record. Forskningsrådet publishes current and closed calls, with full eligibility and budget text, at forskningsradet.no/en/call-for-proposals.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Research Council of Norway the same as Forskningsrådet?
Yes. Forskningsrådet is the Norwegian name for the same organisation; English-language materials and its own English-language site use the name Research Council of Norway, and the two names refer to a single agency, not separate bodies.
Can an international researcher apply to Forskningsrådet directly?
For most of the international schemes described here, no — applications are submitted by the Norwegian host institution on behalf of the researcher, not by the researcher individually. A prospective candidate needs to work with a Norwegian institution willing to act as applicant before a Forskningsrådet application can be submitted.
Does the Research Council of Norway fund researchers who are already based in Europe?
Not under the targeted international-recruitment scheme described above, which under recent calls has excluded candidates based in or employed by institutions within the Council of Europe’s 46 member states, plus Russia specifically. Other instruments, including EU-level mechanisms like MSCA and Forskningsrådet’s own mobility-structured FRIPRO track, have different eligibility rules, so a candidate excluded from one scheme may still qualify for another.
How does INTPART differ from the researcher recruitment scheme?
INTPART funds institutional partnerships and collaborative infrastructure over a multi-year horizon; it does not recruit or relocate an individual researcher to a Norwegian institution the way the targeted recruitment scheme does. The two are frequently used by the same institution for different purposes rather than being alternative routes to the same goal.
